business as usual
by impracticality
Summary: • she paints on her smile every day like it's the easiest thing in the world—shampoo. •


**||business as usual**

**||notes :: Hi~ Intruding into your fandom again, sorry~**

**But Shampoo is so under-loved I felt another Shampoo-centric drabble was in order…**

**Like the last drabble, I don't mention the girl Ranma chose by name. So you can think of it as whoever you want~ **

-x-

This is the story of the girl who never won.

-x-

She paints on her smile everyday like it's the easiest thing in the world, and for a while, it is. Red stain is cheap in Nerima, because there are so many broken hearts to pigment her base-bitter potions with.

The spatula girl fights with batter-twirls and powder bombs. The psychotic girl fights with silk ribbons and lunacy-fueled, sharp-toothed smiles. The perverted girl fights with high-pitched screams and violent insults.

She fights with two chui and all the hatred that's gotten her this far.

There is always someone stronger, she's been told this many times. Yet experience is the best (only) teacher, so she doesn't fully grasp the concept until she's vaulted in vertigo, and dusty, parched earth crumbles under her palms.

She draws the back of her hand across her mouth, and grimaces at the taste of her own blood. The redhead above her blinks cluelessly, not so much unapologetic as utterly unaware that the contest victor had just lost her title to a gluttonous stranger.

When she cradles the victor's face in her hands, bequeathing the Kiss of Death as her eyes flutter closed, she tries not to forget what her split-second of victory felt like.

-x-

She thinks, sometimes, that she will break Mousse's spirit one day.

Then he shoves an overly extravagant bouquet in her face, and his expression is foolishly hopeful, even when disdain curls her lip. And she knows that another day has gone by, yet Mousse is not quite ready to give her up yet.

But she tries to consider this a victory on her part. Because in Mousse she has dirt cheap labor, an always-willing conspirator, and, more often then not, a scapegoat.

It is on her worst days, when the latest win-over-airen scheme has gone awry, that she likes to think that in Mousse she has a friend.

When he begins to look at her with bitterness in his eyes, she knows that she will eventually lose all this too.

-x-

Cologne shouts at her with a fury that Shampoo didn't know the elder still possessed.

Her replies are cut off, and all her protests are nullified. She can do nothing but sit in quiet acceptance and wonder where she went wrong.

-x-

_He's mine_ is spelled out clearly in the just-married girl's shrewd gaze, and even though Shampoo and Ranma are merely on opposite sides of the room, it feels like they're on opposite sides of the universe.

So she smiles because it's all she knows how to do at this point, and hopes they'll disregard her like always (so they don't notice the tearstains).

Airen - Ranma, this is what she must call him now - dabs frosting from the too-extravagant cake on his wife's nose, laughing at her playful pout. When they lean in for a kiss Shampoo has to turn away.

Someone asks her for a dance. She's too busy tripping over her own feet on her way to the door to answer.

This is what one does when they are hopelessly outclassed. They run.

-x-

"Why?" She whispers, unabashedly forward, and still so terribly misunderstanding. "Why you pick her and not Shampoo?"

He gives her the same look he always does, like he's torn between giving her an honest answer and one that she wants to hear.

He makes his choice. "I love her."

Shampoo's eyes flash darkly. "What has she done to deserve you? Shampoo has proven herself worthy bride. And still -" She pauses for a moment, overwhelmed by shame, envy, dishonor. "And still Shampoo is not good enough for you?"

"It's…" He shrugs. "It's not about being 'worthy' or any of that stuff. I just…I just love her, is all."

She cannot understand. "But _why_?"

He doesn't answer.

When Mousse pulls her into one of his crushing embraces that day, she waits a few seconds longer than usual before shoving him away (and tries to hide the guiltiness that pulls at her frayed heartstrings).

-x-

Ranma has found love, maybe. For now, at least, he thinks he has.

Shampoo knows better. Love is the dreams of young girls in old villages, foolishly starry-eyed and naively romantic, before weapons are welded into their palms and they must leave those dreams behind. This is what the elders call growing up. She _knows better_.

So when dusky sunbeams are dragged back towards the horizon, and Nerima makes the slow transition from day to night, she doesn't look out her window and let out a sideways sigh, or count stars, or make wishes.

Instead she looks everywhere, anywhere but the mirror. Now more than ever, she cannot stand to gaze upon the monster that lives inside of its crystalline walls.

Because Shampoo has never won - not even against herself.


End file.
